Reddit is in turmoil — but there's hope for the future

Reddit, the self-described front page of the internet, is in a bit of a mess, as TechCrunch reports.

Several high-ranking employees have left the company because of its alleged antagonistic culture, including most recently Celestine Maddy, the VP of marketing, and editorial director Vickie Chang. Meanwhile, highly touted products like Upvoted have been put on the backburner or abandoned altogether. But despite these troubles, Reddit has certain fundamentals that suggest that it is still poised for strong growth.

Here are the latest signs of the ongoing turmoil at Reddit:

An exodus of talent. Aside from Celestine Maddy and Vickie Chang, additional departures since May include Reddit's HR generalist Nicole-Hasmin Clark, the head of community Kristine Fasnacht, associate creative director Stephen Greenwood, and scores of people from the marketing team.

Big products put on hold. Upvoted is a standalone digital publication launched and led by Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian since October. The idea was to repurpose Reddit's user-generated content onto Upvoted, and grow the new site to reach audiences outside of Reddit's regular user base. It was hoped that both Reddit and Upvoted would then grow into large, distinct, and mutually-reinforcing media companies. The brakes have been applied on Upvoted, though Ohanian said in June that the project would be up and running again in the next few months.

These are some of the factors causing Reddit's current travails:

An unsavory work culture. Former Reddit employees criticized the lack of effective management at the company, and the pervading "bro-like", alcohol-friendly environment. These accounts portray a work culture that has retracted from the pro-diversity, anti-harassment turn of mind promoted by former interim CEO Ellen Pao.

Trolls and NSFW content. Reddit's emphasis on free speech, user-generated content, and loose organization can cause conversations on the platform to degrade into absurdity, obscenity, or vitriol. This unpredictable element has deterred some advertisers from the platform.

Late to the mobile game. Reddit was very late to adapt to mobile. It only released an official native app in April this year, even though half of its user base was already mobile. Before this, third-party developers provided app solutions for users to access Reddit on mobile, such as Alien Blue, which Reddit acquired in 2014.

Yet Reddit still has the potential to grow into a leading publisher. It remains popular, as 32nd most visited desktop site in the US, according to Comscore, and with a user base of over 230 million monthly uniques. Its users are young, with 59% between the age 18-29, and substantially male, with only 29% being female, according to Pew. This youthful demographic will appeal to advertisers who are eager to reach a population with rising discretionary income.

The platform also retains several other key advantages:

Reddit is unique. There are few websites that do what Reddit does, on such a vast scale, with such an engaged community. Threads like AMAs (ask-me-anything) generate a lot of hype - with presidents, movie stars, and other public figures serving as regular hosts - and efforts at imitating these have largely failed on other platforms despite the best attempts of Twitter and Facebook.

Subreddits are growing. From 2015 to present, the number of subreddits - mini-forums or directories created by Reddit users, or Redditors - grew from around 550,000 to nearly 900,000, according to Reddit Metrics. Each new subreddit creates a community of users united under a common interest, providing new opportunities for advertisers to tap.

It is developing a more robust ad business. The company is resolved on developing its ad tech, targeting and measurement capabilities, and is starting to give brands direct insights into the performance of their ads. Reddit has also been working on its sales process, collating data and reports on ad performance for presentations to advertisers, and amassing an ad sales staff of about 10 people.